Wednesday’s Buzz: 4.24.13

Students entering Commons on Monday morning were confronted with a new layout: a rope blocking their access to the food stations. On Monday, Yale Dining moved the card-swipe check-in stations from the front door to directly in front of the food serving area, opening up the seating area to free access. Students must swipe in each time they collect food but they can swipe multiple times while in Commons. Director of Residential Dining Cathy Van Dyke SOM ’86 said the rearrangement was designed to stop students from taking advantage of open access to Commons to eat both breakfast and lunch on one swipe and then use their lunch swipe at a retail station like Durfees.

Two new initiatives in the School of Management’s Global Network for Advanced Management — an additional Immersion Week and new online courses for schools in the network — aim to strengthen the bonds between SOM and the international business community. Representatives from 20 schools in the Global Network, a group of 23 international business schools that SOM Dean Edward Snyder created last year, met last week in Beijing to discuss the network’s progress. At the meeting, SOM decided to partner with six new business schools to organize an additional Immersion Week in October and to pilot two online courses that will use advanced technology to virtually convene students from Global Network schools this fall.

In Woodbridge Hall, presidents may come and go — six in the past 40 years, to be precise — but one thing has remained constant: the red leather appointment books in which Regina Starolis has painstakingly written every presidential appointment since 1973. When University President Richard Levin steps down from the presidency in June, so will Starolis, his executive assistant, and so will her characteristic scheduling books. In the age of iPhones and GCals, Starolis’ hand-written calendars have been a point of light-hearted contention in the president’s office. Ever since Levin started using his first Blackberry, Starolis said he has pleaded with her to switch to digital. But Starolis prefers the control of a pencil and eraser.